M2M FEATURE NEWS

How M2M will Make the Move to Mass Market

It boils down to this: everyone thinks IoT is the next big thing, but there are so many piranhas in the pond that there’s a good chance the industry gets eaten. Until the various developers start building on platforms that use a common language, M2M communication is not going to attain ubiquity.

Steve Willmott, CEO of 3Scale, one of the leading API management platforms, said that the key element for achieving universal M2M communication is to develop a common vocabulary for objects and actions. “The language of events, a shared vocabulary in how common events are described in the code is the secret,” Willmott said. “If the terms are universal, then smart devices can talk to each other about those events and the syntax of how they communicate will matter less.”

The industry is right now undergoing the silo wars, he said, wherein many developers and vendors are building architecture that works well enough within the proprietary structure, but can’t function as well outside of its home turf. One of the ways out of that is in discovering the API that can access the silo. “If you figure out the API,” he said, “you can figure out how to work with the device or sensor.” The trouble is, as the number of APIs in play increases, it becomes harder to find what’s out there. He suggested a series of directories that can help, including API discovery services like ProgrammableWeb, Mashape, and his own APIs.IO. He said he really advocates for machine readable meta-data formats like APIs.JSON to publicize APIs.

“The language of events is the critical evolution that needs to happen, but we’re a long way from it,” Willmott said. “When it’s finally here, it’ll be very powerful.”

Right now, it seems IoT is still just a babe. When it grows up, it’ll be something to see.